Biohazard RCU: Raccoon City University
by CopperGorgon
Summary: One year after the bizarre events at Raccoon City and Raccoon Forest, Raccoon City University remains untouched by the madness of the T-Virus. Chris Zimmerman and her twin brother Kyle do not know what horrors lie ahead for them when they enroll at the pr


Biohazard: RCU  
Raccoon City University.  
1  
Vanishing  
  
Prologue  
  
Thursday September 16, 1999 Raccoon City University Arclay Mountain Range  
  
There was a flash of light, and the visage of a ruined city could be seen. Wreckage was scattered everywhere, only cold hard stone where buildings once had been. Where once had been homes and businesses there lay only smoldering rubble, a grim testament to the powers of the weapons of man. This was Raccoon City, once a bustling metropolis, once full of suburbs with manicured lawns, and old buildings restored from art deco and art nouveau designs. Now the place was nothing, only a smoking hole at the foot of the Arclay mountain range.  
  
Another flash of light and then the room went black. Only the rustling of papers remained in the small room for a moment, and then a blazing blinding whiteness. Students blinked their eyes against the harsh light, gathering together the last of their belongings. One girl did not move however. She remained still in her seat, staring at the blank projection screen, her vividly blue eyes somewhat distant. She could hear the sound of chairs scraping and people shuffling out, like the sick bodies listlessly making their way through city streets. The Cannibal disease, an unknown pathogen, the destructor of an entire city, that was what sat writhing on the girl's mind like a worm on a hook, unable to escape. Bodies, almost dead, flesh sloughing off, starved for human flesh, reaching out for her. Then one grabbed her shoulder.  
  
The blue eyed girl jumped with a start, jerking her head around to view her assailant, black tipped bleached hair swishing as she did so. Her eyes came to rest on the eyes of another, nearly the same shade of deep turquoise as her own. "Chris?" the voice of her attacker asked, sounding more concerned than dead and mindless. "Chris are you alright?"  
  
Her vision cleared after a moment more of blinking and Christine found herself face to face with her own twin brother Kyle. "No," she said, shaking her head and looking back to the projection screen. "I must have phased out for a minute." Thoughts of the terrible happenings last September danced through her mind, preceded by the dreadful images from the slide show which now seemed burned into her retinas.  
  
"Come on," her brother said, helping the girl to her feet, his voice still concerned. "Lets get outside, Tess and Bets are waiting for us on the lawn."  
  
Christine nodded and stood up, gathering her notes into a jumbled pile and stuffing them into an old army surplus backpack. There was no reason to keep her friends waiting, nothing was wrong here. But if there was seriously nothing wrong, then why did the girl feel cold down to her bones? Fear-that was the only possible answer. It wasn't an emotion Chris felt very often. Usually she was the first to try anything, the first to run in with her guns figuratively blazing if there was trouble. So why did what happened the previous September terrify her so greatly? Something wasn't right about it, not at all.  
  
There had always been a doubt in the girl's head about the story the general public had been told. How a disease had mysteriously manifested over the summer and been spread by a few scattered carriers until it covered the entire population of a city. It just didn't add up. Someone would have noticed before it got that far, and what about the Raccoon S.T.A.R.S.? The Special Tactics And Rescue Squad team had been sent into Raccoon Forest to retrieve information on the so called Cannibal Killings, and had ended up getting themselves suspended without pay for the bizarre story the survivors had supposedly concocted.  
  
Shortly thereafter the S.T.A.R.S. had vanished from Raccoon City, never to be heard from again. There had been talk of drugs and delusions, but after a while even the talking stopped. It was as if the town had fallen again into a hushed whisper, afraid to speak too loudly because a terrible creature might hear. Then, just weeks after that Aliyah had vanished.  
  
Aliyah was the twins' older sister, their guardian and almost-mother. She had raised them in place of their Aunt May when their mother had died. Aunt May had been an eccentric older woman, their father's sister, and had had no time for the three young people. When the old lady was murdered Aliyah had been eighteen and had taken on guardianship of the nine year old twins herself. Now she was gone thought, vanished without a trace. The other S.T.A.R.S. in Philadelphia who Ali had worked with, were even giving up hope that the woman was even still alive. Was it all connected somehow?  
  
"Chris?" Kyle's soft voice broke into his sister's thoughts and she glanced over to him again. They were nearly the same height, Kyle less than an inch taller than Christine's five foot seven. "Honestly, are you ok?"  
  
Chris sighed and shook her head to assert the negative yet again. "I was thinking about Ali," she said, her own voice slightly quieter than usual, with the slightest hint of breaking at the end. There were tears behind it, behind her eyes. Chris could feel them welling up, but she was still unable to cry. She hadn't cried for what seemed like years. "She's not dead. I know she's not." The truth was, though, that the girl didn't know. There was no way to tell if her older sister was alive or dead.  
  
"We'll find her," Kyle said, putting an arm around his sister's waist to pull her into a half hug. "We'll find her and she'll be ok."  
  
"But when?" Chris nearly shouted pulling away from her brother's comforting arm. Heads turned in the front hallway the twins had just entered. "When will we find her? We're not doing shit sitting here just going to school. We can't find her if we don't look!" The girl didn't even bother to notice the crowd that was beginning to gather, lured by her raised voice.  
  
Kyle did notice. He looked uncomfortably at his sister and lightly took her arm, trying to calm her and pull her toward the huge double doors in the process. "Come on Chris, we can talk about this outside." His voice was calm and soft, but hid the slightest hint of worry behind it. "Come on," he repeated and finally she gave in to his promptings, stalking past the black- haired boy and out into the courtyard, leaving him to chase after her.  
  
Chris still didn't notice the faces turned toward her as she ran past, all she was aware of was the burning in her cheeks and the way her throat felt closed so tightly that she might never be able to swallow again. Kyle didn't understand, she thought as she ran through the pine trees, no longer feeling like crying, just angry. He was too busy with his friends and his projects to worry half enough about their sister - or about Chris herself for that matter. That was the trouble with having a genius for a brother. The girl had been lucky to have ended up going to the same school as Kyle. Granted of course, he had given up going to Oxford to attend the small university, located high up in the Arclay mountain range. He had done it for her. With that thought Chris slowed her running, feeling suddenly upset at having been so vexed with her twin.  
  
She was out of breath, and felt like shit. It was as if all of her anger had been drained out of her and then turned into tiredness. The girl sank to rest on the soft pine needles that littered the ground like a blanket of russet orange, the soft smell of decaying wood sweet in her nostrils.  
  
Decay, those people had been decaying alive. Not even alive, they had been walking around the city like the dead. They had been like zombies. At the beginning of the outbreak, there had been news coverage. The media wasn't afraid yet of what was happening. First the cannibal killings, a few scattered out in the forest, the work of a cult or wild animals. Then there had been more, and one day in late September, the whole of Raccoon City had gone zombie. Chris shivered, suddenly cold, even though the mid September air was warm with the dying throes of summer. She could almost hear the moaning again, the soft mournful call of the sick, calling her.  
  
"Chris!" they called through the dense pines, "Chris, where the hell are you?" They sounded irritated, not like the sick and dying at all.  
  
Again Chris' eyes snapped open and she jumped to her feet, "Over here Tess, I'll be right there in a minute." Not zombies. Everything was fine. Christine could breathe again as she ran back to the main lawn of the school.  
  
Tess was waiting there, standing, hands on her denim covered hips, her dark face looking very not amused. She no doubt had been waiting a long time. Chris walked up and gave her an apologetic look, then glanced downwards. On the ground near to Tess' feet was curled Bets. Bets was Tess' girlfriend and Christine's other best friend, a lovely rich girl whose parents had worked for Umbrella inc., ever since moving here from Japan. They had been lucky enough to have been back in Japan on business last September. In that manner, the whole family had escaped the terrible fate of Raccoon.  
  
"Sorry," Chris sighed and flopped down on the grass near Bets' head. Maybe she was going crazy. Wouldn't that be interesting? Christine Amanda Zimmerman committed at age nineteen.  
  
"Yo, earth to Chris," chimed Tess, waving a hand in front of the girl's face. "You've gotta be spacier than ever today. Where's that brother of yours, we sent him out to find you a half hour ago."  
  
Chris blinked. A half hour? Had it been that long since she had gotten out of class? No, it couldn't have been, she couldn't have been daydreaming for that amount of time, but a single glance to the clock tower on the school building told her that it was truth. "I think I'm going mad."  
  
Bets stirred and turned over onto her back opening her dark grey eyes. "If you're going mad, can I have your brother?"  
  
"Hey!" Tess pouted, "You're mine honey, and don't you forget it." Both girls laughed. Chris's own face remained serious.  
  
"That presentation on Raccoon City really freaked me out, but it got me thinking," she said looking from one friend to the other. "What if the disease wasn't really a disease? Or more likely, what if it was actually caused by Umbrella itself?" Both girls looked at Chris curiously so she went on.  
  
"The story is full of so many holes that it generally doesn't make sense. There's no way the disease could have gotten past the whole CDC or whatnot for so long."  
  
"Yeah, but it was a pretty fast acting virus," Bets interjected frowning.  
  
"Exactly, so someone would have had to have noticed it showing up beforehand. It couldn't have just come from nowhere."  
  
The sound of footsteps approaching behind them, startled both Bets and Chris out of their discussion.  
  
"They're calling for you at the office Bets," Kyle's voice spoke up from where he stood. All three girls turned to look at him, Bets gathering her effects in confusion and standing.  
  
"I'll see you guys later," she said, leaning over to give Tess a little kiss.  
  
"Later love," Tess said and the three watched her go.  
  
That was close to a month ago. They never saw Bets again. 


End file.
